One of my favorite mementos from my years at Miami-Dade Community College -- besides my college journal and old Catalyst issues -- is a stuffed Yuppie Opus doll that I bought in one of my rare whimsical moods while I was balancing a full-time courseload and working on the campus' student newspaper staff.

At the time -- a few days after my 23rd birthday -- I was perhaps the happiest I had ever been; I had transformed myself from the high school senior who graduated 275th in a class of 585 to a Dean's List student with a 3.85 grade point average. In addition, I was a good journalism student: within two weeks after having completed my first assignment for Catalyst, I'd been promoted twice, first to assistant opinions editor, then to copy editor. I was also getting a real every-two-weeks paycheck; Prof. Peter C. Townsend, the Director of Student Publications and my journalism instructor, had hired me as an office assistant through the College's Work-Study program. (Oh, and I was also in love with one of the girls on the staff!) For the first time since I had graduated from South Miami High, I felt that I was going to be a successful writer in spite of my disability.

In any case, I was in a pretty blissful state of mind when I was walking through the campus bookstore, which is located in Building Eight of what's now the Kendall Campus of Miami-Dade College -- the same building that houses the Catalyst/Student Publications complex. And there, displayed fairly prominently on a shelf loaded with other stuffed toys, was Yuppie Opus.

Opus, of course, is cartoonist Berke (short for "Berkeley") Breathed's most popular character from his "Bloom County" comic strip that ran in most major newspapers from the mid-1980s to the early '90s. Breathed's wacky and often sardonic wit knew no bounds; no celebrity or politician was immune from the cartoonist's gentle but knowing satire, and reality often took a back seat to such notions as Binkley's "anxiety closet," sleazy and Reaganite attorney Steve Dallas' ultra-macho approach to women, Milo Bloom's irreverent approach to journalism as a staffer for the Bloom County Picayune, the anti-Garfield looniness of Bill the Cat...and, of course, the gentle, innocent whimsy of Opus the Penguin.

In 1986, Little, Brown and Company published Bloom County Babylon: Five Years of Basic Naughtiness, a collection of selected daily (black and white) and Sunday (four-color) strips drawn and written by Berke Breathed. Its 224 pages, starting with the hilarious prose prologue The Great LaRouche Toad-Frog Massacre (an "excerpt" from Binkley's Daze of My Youth: A Bloom County Memoir) and ending with a typically whimsical Sunday strip featuring Opus and the hyper-intelligent Oliver Wendell Jones, cover the first five years of "Bloom County's" existence, which ended in 1989.

Although the visual style is similar to G.B. Trudeau's "Doonesbury," Breathed's strip is definitely loopier, loonier, and more whimsical. Yes, its humor is very much rooted in the political and cultural scenes of the Eighties, and yes, Breathed poked fun at the excesses of both the conservative and liberal constituencies, but "Bloom County" was definitely more lighthearted and zanier than Trudeau's politics-centered strip.

Consider:

Set up for the following 4-panel sequence from 1983: Opus the Penguin answers the phone; it's a pollster

Panel 1- Caller: Hello, I'm calling from the Bureau of Nosy Statistics. Would you answer some questions?

Opus: Certainly, madam.

Panel 2- Caller: What is your weight? Height? Pants size? And sexual preference?

Opus: 36 pounds. 2'-11". I don't wear any pants. Svelte, buoyant waterfowl.

Panel 3- Caller: Thank you.

Opus: My pleasure.

Panel 4- Opus (thinking to himself): They're either going to arrest me or fire her.

Breathed's satire leaves no stone unturned; if anyone or anything was hip, trendy, or newsworthy in the 1980s, chances were that "Bloom County" would somehow fit him/her/it in a strip. Charles and Di, Michael Jackson, Billy Idol, Star Trek fans, George Lucas, journalists, politicians of all stripes, and even the sexual mores of the times are all fair game here. There are even multi-strip continuing storylines -- Binkley's 1983 riff on the recently-released Return of the Jedi is a hoot; its final strip features "Luke Binkleywalker" and George Lucas discussing the future of the Star Wars saga.

Panel 1 - Binkley: Well? Is this the end of the flick? Hey! Is it a wrap?

Lucas: Not quite, Luke. I have six more "Star Wars" chapters to go. We should get to them all by...oh, 1998.

Panel 2 - Binkley: 1998, Mr. Lucas?

Lucas: Yes...yes...I think so...

Panel 3 - (Binkley ignites his lightsaber, swings it, and with a FOOSH, decapitates Lucas)

Panel 4 - Binkley (lightsaber still ignited): Jedi Knights don't wait 15 years for a sequel.